Uphold, formerly Bitreserve, is a cloud-based financial services platform enabling users to convert deposits to their account via bank account, credit card, and cryptocurrencies into reserve-backed currencies and commodities. It allows anyone with a device to send, receive, and exchange money and commodities. Uphold claims to have facilitated over $2 billion USD in transactions since its inception in 2015.

Kidd is the co-founder Hard Yaka, which makes early round investments in exchange space startups. He is an adviser/investor for numerous startups in the exchange space, including Shift, Ripple and 3taps, and previously Square and Twitter. He was previously a director at Promontory Financial and a senior analyst for payments at The Board of Governor of the Federal Reserve.

Kidd’s investment will help fill Uphold’s loss assurance to roughly 20 percent of its crypto holdings, protecting its users from potential losses due to cryptocurrency volatility or other issues. Kidd’s investment vehicle, Hard Yaka, will also help fund the creation of Uphold Labs to accelerate research and development (R&D) efforts to its consumer and partner solutions businesses. As part of the partnership, Kidd will join Uphold’s Board of Directors.

“This is a landmark partnership for the crypto market,” said Adrian Steckel, CEO of Uphold. “We have always provided our Members with unparalleled transparency and safety, as well as the greatest choice of currencies. Now we’re also giving them unprecedented asset protection. This collaboration will also enable us to accelerate our product development activities, focusing on adding new assets, more connectivity to financial systems, as well as blockchain and Ripple-centric projects.”

“I am impressed by the outstanding quality of Uphold’s technology as well as their rigorous compliance practices,” said Kidd. “Their operation is scaling fast and makes a great addition to the Hard Yaka stable of partnerships and businesses. Uphold stands out as an entity that is pioneering the infrastructure, controls, and culture that inspires confidence from regulators and users alike. I’m thankful to get to work with the Uphold team to bolster the already outstanding R&D and compliance foundation at the firm.”